OUR OPINION: NOAA succeeds only in making fishermen extinct

Simply put, New England fishermen will likely be extinct by 2014. If the latest round of catch reductions issued by NOAA are implemented – a 77 percent cut in the cod quota in the Gulf of Maine and a 66 percent reduction in the Georges Bank allotment – by May 1, New England fishermen won’t survive the year.

The Patriot Ledger, Quincy, MA

Writer

Posted Feb. 23, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 23, 2013 at 11:12 PM

Posted Feb. 23, 2013 at 12:01 AM
Updated Feb 23, 2013 at 11:12 PM

» Social News

Simply put, New England fishermen will likely be extinct by 2014.

If the latest round of catch reductions issued by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration are implemented by May 1 – a 77 percent cut in the cod quota in the Gulf of Maine and a 66 percent reduction in the Georges Bank take – New England fishermen won’t survive the year.

Years of unfunded, unscientific and punitive laws handed down by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have cast fishermen adrift in a sea of regulations designed to drown them. Ostensibly, NOAA’s goal was to protect cod and other groundfish from extinction, yet none of its measures have worked.

In Scituate alone, the groundfishing fleet has been halved in the past decade to only six vessels. Scituate fisherman Frank Mirarchi predicted none of the remaining boats will be able to fish this summer because the catch-limits would make each trip out to sea a net loss.

In a February 19 letter to the New England Congressional Delegation, 173 fishermen from those coastal states beseeched legislators for help in saving their jobs, their homes, their livelihoods. We join them in asking the Massachusetts delegation to do all it can to appeal to NOAA to help save our groundfish stocks and our fishing industry. Each are equally important.

We have little hope, however. Years of faulty science and even corruption within NOAA, as documented in a 2010 report by the Commerce Department which oversees NOAA, have destroyed an industry that has existed off of our shores for millenia. So far, NOAA has done little to accept its responsibility.

Its haphazard administration has served only to sustain the livelihoods of bureaucrats in Washington. Though the Commerce Department last September declared the Northeast groundfish industry a disaster, opening it up to potentially $100 million in federal funds, a paralyzed Congress has not seen fit to allocate the funds. Now that the fishermen’s strongest advocates are no longer in Congress – Sens. John Kerry, Scott Brown and Olympia Snowe have all moved on – and sequestration is mere days away, there’s little chance it will ever pass.

To his credit, second term Congressman Bill Keating is trying. In a written statement, he said, “My efforts will not cease until the docks of the South Shore, South Coast, Cape, and Islands are thriving again.” We commend him for that.

The Northeast fishermen have done everything asked of them to help save a resource they depend upon. Their cooperation has been met by a near total collapse of what they love best at the hands of a federal agency that has served both poorly.

As the 173 New England fishermen wrote in their letter to Congress, “For many of us, this is probably our last shot at survival.”

We urge lawmakers to ensure that the fishermen who have helped shape our country’s landscape, our economy and identity don’t become extinct themselves.